January 16

January 16 – AM          Page 45, We Agnostics, Chapter 4

      Lack of power, that was our dilemma.  We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves.  Obviously.  But where and how were we to find this Power?
Well, that’s exactly what this book is about.  Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem.  That means we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral.  And it means, of course, that we are going to talk about God.  Here difficulty arises with agnostics.  Many times we talk to a new man and watch his hopes rise as we discuss his alcoholic problems and explain our fellowship.  But his face falls when we speak of spiritual matters, especially when we mention God, for we have re-opened a subject which our man thought he had neatly evaded or entirely ignored.

January 16 – PM          Page xv-xvi, Foreword to Second Edition (1955)

      The spark that was to flare into the first A.A. group was struck at Akron, Ohio, in June 1935, during a talk between a New York stockbroker and an Akron physician.  Six months earlier, the broker had been relieved of his drink obsession by a sudden spiritual experience, following a meeting with an alcoholic friend who had been in contact with the Oxford Groups of that day.  He had also been greatly helped by the late Dr. William D. Silkworth, a New York specialist in alcoholism who is now accounted no less than a medical saint by A.A. members, and whose story of the early days of our Society appears in the next pages.  From this doctor, the broker had learned the grave nature of alcoholism.  Though he could not accept all the tenets of the Oxford Groups, he was convinced of the need for moral inventory, confession of personality defects, restitution to those harmed, helpfulness to others, and the necessity of belief in and dependence upon God.